Pace, John P --- "Letter from Geneva: The A(RRA) Team" [2002] HRightsDef 23; (2002) 11(3) Human Rights Defender 1

Letter from Geneva

The ‘A’ (RRA) Team

John P. Pace

UNHCR is a unique sector of the United Nations system; it was set up in the early fifties to ensure the protection of persons who qualified as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention. The Convention does not have a treaty monitoring mechanism, as is the case with the principal human rights treaties. Instead, the versatility of the implementation of the Convention was entrusted to the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with an Executive Committee (ExCom, meeting once a year) made up of Governments, where policy issues are addressed and directions are agreed upon. Over the years, these meetings have become crucial, and the participation of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), who, in fact, are directly or indirectly involved in carrying out the activities of protection, has been recognised as a vital component of the annual meeting. UNHCR wisely organises a Programme of Consultations with NGOs which takes place immediately prior to the ExCom meeting itself. The members of ExCom also participate in these consultations. Once again this year, the UNHCR provided the scenario for an intensive two weeks of relentless activity.

It is this activity that maintains the supply of – rapidly depleting – oxygen to a convention that has long been out of date. The recognised principal criterion to determine refugee status, “well-founded fear of persecution”, long having been rendered obsolete as other “fears”, such as security, survival for various reasons, etc, increasingly became the cause for huge numbers of people seeking to leave their country to build a new life elsewhere.

It is today’s problem, involving millions of people, and as we all know, Australia gets a residue of it. The response of the Government has been indefinite mandatory detention, including shipping “unauthorised arrivals” to Nauru and Papua New Guinea, and other similar, draconian measures. It is well worth obtaining a copy of the booklet prepared by the Centre for Refugee Research The Truth Hurts from the Centre’s office in the Mathews Building at The University of New South Wales (UNSW). The Amnesty International report Offending human dignity – the ‘Pacific Solution’ published on 26 August 2002, the anniversary of the Tampa refoulement, gives an excellent account of the facts, as well as the nature and extent of the problem. Other, equally important reports have been published on this problem, as for example, the OXFAM report Adrift in the Pacific issued earlier this year.

The 58th session of ExCom was therefore particularly important for Australia as indeed it was for the wider international community.

The presence of the Australian Refugee Rights Alliance (ARRA) at these meetings furnished a much-needed supply of this much-needed oxygen. Their message was clear:

•	The refugee problem is first and foremost a human rights problem, and it has to be addressed, first and foremost, as such.

•

The Refugee Convention was never intended to replace the protection afforded by international human rights law, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). At best, it was intended to address the plight of refugees by giving them protection pending the restoration of their fundamental human rights. For this purpose, certain agreements of principle were forged among governments, notably the principle of “non-refoulement”.

•	The Convention has reached the limit of its “elasticity”, and it is necessary to monitor its application by governments who are party to the Convention, through a mechanism, such as the extra-conventional system of the human rights treaties.

With the inspiring leadership of Eileen Pittaway (Centre for Refugee Research, UNSW) the team glided through a gruelling two-week programme of tireless activity, ranging from participation at the innumerable briefing sessions and formal meetings, to awareness building among the international governmental and non-governmental community present in Geneva in considerable numbers. They delivered the message clearly, fairly and completely; after all, this was a team that knew, more than most people in those conference and meeting rooms, what they were talking about, having direct experience of the plight of refugees, notably those who were the victims of the − arbitrary − mandatory detention policies in Australia. They carried out their work with exemplary elegance and effectiveness, keeping a passionate debate on a dignified level, but with ruthless efficiency.

There is no doubt that the presence of the ARRA team has had an effect on the future directions of UNHCR. This organisation must now know that the problem of “people flows” needs to be addressed in coordination with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and with a pragmatic approach taken to enable the international community to focus its priorities on addressing and redressing the causes of these flows. The part played by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the execution of the “Pacific Solution” could also not be ignored.

True to their motto, “No Compromise on Human Rights”, the team has brought home to the United Nations the voice of those who languish in detention indefinitely.

Congratulations ARRA for bringing the message to Geneva and to the international community!

John P. Pace

Geneva

4 October 2002